WI: Lockheed C-5 Galaxy Airliner

kernals12

Banned
The Lockheed C-5 Galaxy has been a workhorse of the US military since it was introduced in 1970. It's absolutely enormous, with a payload of 270,000 pounds. It's big enough to swallow the fuselage of a C-130
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Lockheed considered making an airline version known as the L-500
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They said an all passenger version could carry 1000 people (I don't know if that means no space for cargo which makes it a very meaningless superlative). The company decided against it as Boeing's 747 struggled in the marketplace. This along with cuts to military spending with the drawdown of the Vietnam war and troubles with the L-1011 airliner brought Lockheed to the brink of bankruptcy and forced a government bailout in 1971. So what if Lockheed hat bit the bullet and made an airliner out of this giant cargo plane? With more passenger capacity than a 747, it could've outsold Boeing and perhaps allow the company to remain in the commercial aviation market.
 
Would have been an even bigger failure than the L-1011. The market for jumbo jets at that time was filled with 747s, and there are only a few routes that can support these kinds of passenger numbers. Besides that, the purpose of 747s was to minimize per-seat costs for a four-engine plane, which the airlines needed for over-water international routes. Beyond the difficulties of operating a plane with a thousand passengers (catering, deplaning, flight attendants), the hub and spoke system that makes the A380 now just somewhat economical did not exist at that time. Passenger numbers were much lower, and there were fewer airport restrictions that select for few high-capacity planes over many small planes (noise restrictions, airport slots). The only viable routes I can imagine would be routes like New York - Los Angeles and New York - London and maybe the Japanese domestic routes. Short routes outside Japan would probably be intolerable with the length of time it would take to turn a plane this big around (JAL made it work with almost 550 people on all-economy 747s).
 

kernals12

Banned
Would have been an even bigger failure than the L-1011. The market for jumbo jets at that time was filled with 747s, and there are only a few routes that can support these kinds of passenger numbers. Besides that, the purpose of 747s was to minimize per-seat costs for a four-engine plane, which the airlines needed for over-water international routes. Beyond the difficulties of operating a plane with a thousand passengers (catering, deplaning, flight attendants), the hub and spoke system that makes the A380 now just somewhat economical did not exist at that time. Passenger numbers were much lower, and there were fewer airport restrictions that select for few high-capacity planes over many small planes (noise restrictions, airport slots). The only viable routes I can imagine would be routes like New York - Los Angeles and New York - London and maybe the Japanese domestic routes. Short routes outside Japan would probably be intolerable with the length of time it would take to turn a plane this big around (JAL made it work with almost 550 people on all-economy 747s).
But if Lockheed had introduced the L-500 at the same time as the 747, wouldn't they be able to outmuscle Boeing?
 
But if Lockheed had introduced the L-500 at the same time as the 747, wouldn't they be able to outmuscle Boeing?
A few points:

1. Only 500 or so 747s were sold before 1980, so the market is probably not big enough to support two models profitably.
2. The 747s were at the top end of what airlines wanted as far as passenger capacity, and they were unlikely to be able to fill a larger plane.
3. The 747 was sold to the airlines as a convertible that could do freight duty after all the subsonic transcontinental airliners were put out of business by the SSTs.
4. The C-5 would have been more expensive to operate than a 747 because of the weaker and more inefficient engines.
5. Lockheed was in a really poor financial position at the time, so airlines may have been worried about loosing good manufacturer support.
(EDIT)
6. The C-5 was plagued with the second "bad wing" scandal Lockheed had in a decade.
7. When the military wants to airlift "normal stuff" like food and uniforms and spare parts overseas, they contract with civilian cargo operators instead of flying their own planes.

Overall, the 747 is a better airliner for the period the airlines were planning on using it as an airliner, and it's also a better (more efficient) civilian freight transport. The only thing the C-5 is better at is transporting outsize cargo.
 
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Lockheed proposed the C-5 or L-500 mostly as Cargo-passengers Mix Plane, actually they proposed that passengers (255) could take there Cars (50) with on vacations or Business trip on board of L-500, or 255 passengers, 24 cars and Cargo containers
Or for US car Industry bringing 50 to 108 cars to oversea.
The German company Krupps proposed a system to make the L-500 into a only passengers plane by pushing 8 Container into L-500, each with 72 passengers and there luggage in total 576 passengers. (no windows}

What was the problems ?
The C-5 had a "bad wing design" that plagued Lockheed for a decade.
Lockheed was at edge of bankruptcy in that time, so airlines worried about loosing the manufacturer support for there Fleet.
Oil prise shock of 1973 made L-500 a very expensive Airliner, see how PanAm was burning money with there 747 Fleet in 1970s
 
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